Os Lusíadas is a Portuguese epic poem by Luís Vaz de Camões. It is written in Homeric fashion and focuses mainly on a fantastical interpretation of the Portuguese voyages of discovery during the 15th and 16th centuries. Os Lusíadas is often regarded as Portugal's national epic, much in the way as Virgil's Aeneid was for the Ancient Romans, as well as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey for the Ancient Greeks. It was first printed in 1572, three years after the author returned from the Indies.The poem consists of ten cantos written in the decasyllabic ottava rima with the most important part, the arrival in India, at the beginning of Canto VII.